Fireworks
by loozy
Summary: When he is eleven- years- old, Don Eppes plays with fire, literally. Don, Eppes- family; mention of others; AU.


**Title:** Fireworks  
**Series:** Fireworks- series  
**Author:** **loozy**  
**Characters:** Don, Eppes- family; mention of others  
**Rating:** PG- 13/ K  
**Summary:** When he is eleven- years- old, Don Eppes plays with fire, literally.  
**Word Count:** 300; 283; 300; 195; 299; 275  
**Spoilers:** none  
**Notes:** Inspired by the challenge on hurt_don by rinkle and beta'ed by the awesome valeriev84...  
**Prompt:** # 65 Burn; # 98 Hospital; # 161 Damages; # 2 Starting Over; # 196 Strength; # 17 In another World  
**Disclaimer:** I do not own any of the characters mentioned in this fic. Numb3rs and everybody associated with it belong to Cheryl Heuton & Nick Fallucci and CBS.  
**Feedback:** Yes, please. I love every kind of review, even the bad ones, as long as they are helpful and constructive.

**Burn**

When he is eleven- years- old, Don Eppes plays with fire, literally.

It is New Year's, and he spends it with Tommy Gillespie from down the road at the park. They have punch with his little sister and her friend and really want to climb the jungle gym but the adults say no.

By the time the new year is coming close, they are fighting to stay awake.

As soon as Mr Gillespie calls out to them, all fatigue is wiped away and the boys hurry over to the adults, the girls following them at a more sedate pace.

Mr Gillespie allows them to light fireworks under supervision and the boys are excited, they jump up and down like puppies at the thought of being able to do something so adult. When fireworks explode all around them and the boys have fired off theirs, Mrs Gillespie hands them sparklers that they hold until they burn down, merge them together and create funny forms with the ones of the girls and look up to the sky from time to time to see the sky on fire.

They throw small fireworks to the road and watch them explode.

And then everything goes wrong.

Don is careful, he really is, but one of the small ones malfunctions, and all of a sudden, his hand is on fire and he does not know if he should scream or cry or just die. The pain is immense, and he is faintly aware of a keening sound, as if an animal is dying.

It reminds him of the one time they found a little bird in the backyard that had fallen out of the nest.

He feels wetness on his face and thinks at first it has started to rain.

But it is just his tears.

**Hospital**

The rush to the hospital is a blur. They are not the only ones at this point in time, lots of accidents always happen on New Year's, but he could not care less about the others. All he cares about is that the wailing stops and that he can feel again.

Right now he is just numb.

He later vaguely remembers that his parents come to sit with them, his mother taking him from Mr Gillespie's arms, rocking him. He presses his face against her coat and the tears stop for a bit. He is surrounded by her essence, the antiseptic of the hospital and the smell of burnt flesh.

A small part of his brain tells him that the burnt flesh is his, that his hands are a mess, and that at any other moment he would fight to look at the gore, but right now he just wants to sleep and forget about all of this.

The pain is killing him, and the wailing just won't stop.

The tears won't stop, either.

He tries to be a brave boy, like the one time he broke his arm and dislocated his shoulder two years ago when he finished off a spectacular homerun, reaching the plate by a margin. Then he barely cried when he was surrounded by his teammates and coach, only letting lose in the car with Dad, but now, this is a pain he has never experienced before.

They have to wait for a while until a doctor comes to see him, and Don is not sure how he can still have any tears left or find a dry spot in Mom's coat to bury his face in by then.

**Damages**

The diagnosis is dire but at least the wailing has stopped.

His right hand, the one holding the firework, will probably never heal properly. He might not even be able to write with it anymore. Tendons have been destroyed and bones have shattered.

In 1979, graft surgery is not where it is today.

The left hand is salvageable, the doctor tells Mom in a quiet voice, thinking that Don in his drug- induced state will not be able to understand him, when he actually does, very clearly and coherently so.

Don will very likely have to switch hands, become ambidextrous. Maybe in a couple of years, medicine will be advanced enough to give him more movement back into the right hand, but the way things are looking right now, the right hand cannot be used for any major functions anymore.

The doctor turns away for a moment to sign a chart a nurse just brought in and mutters, upon her inquisitive look, something condescending about parental supervision and little boys' disregard for security.

If even Don can hear it, so does Mom.

And she is not happy with the doctor, demanding to see another one, someone who can give them a second opinion. The doctor tells her that they are understaffed and that he is the best in the emergency room at the moment which then causes Mom to tell him, rather scathing, that she wants to see a specialist.

Her son deserves nothing better than that.

Someone from plastic surgery will surely be on call and able to attend to her boy's needs, right?

The doctor mumbles something about paging and nearly runs out of the room.

Left alone again, Mom scoops him up in her arms and softly sings _Hey Jude_ to him.

Rain starts to fall again.

**Starting Over**

He is a leftie now.

At first, his classmates tease him when they see his bandaged hands and messy writing, but the teachers soon put an end to that.

He has to learn everything anew, and it is frustrating. His coach is not too impressed with what happened but is willing to give him the chance to learn his skills with his other hand. He vows to spend all his time at the batting cages as soon as his doctor gives him the all clear.

He is waiting for that moment as anxiously as a race horse in the starting box.

Charlie follows him around and tells him the chances of his right hand becoming alright again, and Don would like to snap at him, but his little brother has been sweet and attentive so far, and he cannot help himself.

Plus, Donnie loves him to pieces.

He has to relearn how to play the piano, too, and how to hold a knife and fork when the bandages finally come off the right hand at least.

Slowly he adapts.

His left hand becomes better at writing, at handling cutlery, at working the bat.

He adjusts.

**Strength**

He never becomes quite as good with his left hand at baseball as he ever was with his right one. So during his freshman year, he has to start thinking of other chances to secure a scholarship. Otherwise he will not make it into college, his parents can only afford to send one son to college.

His grandparents never had enough money for a college fund for him, and the money that his parents had was poured into Charlie's education.

He takes a moment to begrudge his brother of that, and then shakes the emotion off.

He will just have to apply himself academically, too. His teachers always tell him that he is better than he presents himself to be, so now is the time to put all that grey matter that can save information like one of those big computers to use.

He starts working towards an academic scholarship and changes his career goal after finding a small silver six- shooter up in the attic one day.

No professional baseball for him. He will become a Fed.

He tells Charlie that on a sunny fall afternoon when they are both lying on the grass in the backyard listening to the Rolling Stones singing about giving shelter. Charlie tells him that this is a good decision, that Donnie will be able to fight crime, put the bad guys in jail.

In another world, Don might have turned out to hate Charlie on a certain level. Instead, he will never forget how Charlie wrote down his homework when he was still unable to do so. Or how he spend countless afternoons right here in the yard, throwing Don the baseball so that he could practice swinging with his left arm.

Nah, his brother is alright and he will miss him.

**In another World**

College is one big adventure.

Don has made it into Harvard by pulling out all the stops during his last years in high school, and now he is doing his undergrad studies here, and maybe go on to Harvard Law School. He talked about it with Mom and she was supportive.

Maybe because she went to Stanford Law School but had always wanted to go to Harvard.

Stanford had accepted him, too, on a full academic ride, but he picked Boston.

Charlie is going to Stanford with Mom, so Dad will not be too alone, and they can come over to the Craftsman on the weekend sometimes.

His roommate is a gangly redhead called Billy Cooper whom Don calls Coop. Across the hall is Colby, an environmental engineering- major, who is sharing with David Sinclair, an art history- major.

Then there are also Tim King, architecture, and Ian Edgerton, science- dude who wants to go do med school later.

They quickly become a tight knit group, eventually joined even by girls who manage to weasel their way in. Don flirts a bit with Liz Warner, business school- attendee together with Nikki Betancourt, who wants to become student president, and Robin Brooks, law school- aspiring student, who Don falls for, totally and completely.

She does not care about his disfigured right hand or the fact that his left hand is still a bit clumsy about fine motor movements when he gets excited.

She cares about him.

And that is enough.

Slowly, the scars on the inside, the ones that he has so carefully hidden from everyone, even himself, start to mend.

And he starts to live.


End file.
